Peoples Bank ($691 million in assets, Indiana) gave its website a major makeover, transforming it from a dated, first-generation design to something much more handsome and contemporary.
To spur engagement with their remodeled website, Peoples created an online scavenger hunt. Structured as a trivia game, the puzzle poses 10 questions strategically designed to reinforce the bank’s key brand and product messages. Those who answer all 10 questions are entered into a drawing for a $250 Visa gift card. The ten questions asked include:
1. In what year did Peoples Bank open for business?
2. Peoples Bank has 12 locations. Beside Munster, name two other locations?
3. Name one of the six free options that “You First Checking” offers.
4. Name two of the services our Wealth Management Specialists can provide to help you grow and safeguard your assets.
5. Our free Online Banking has many advantages, name two of them.
6. The ___________ loan program provides affordable long-term, fixed-rate real estate and equipment financing.
7. This account generally earns a higher interest rate than a checking account that pays interest, and allows you to access your funds via checks.
8. We offer three convenient ways to apply for a mortgage loan. What are they? (Answer not found. Presumably, the correct answers are Online, in branches, and [by phone?]. You’d expect it to be listed in the “Apply for a Loan” tab, but it isn’t there. Clicking on the “Apply” tab/button only takes visitors to one option: apply online. Even a Google search for “three ways to apply ibankpeoples.com” doesn’t help.)
9. Name the checking account that offers you cash rewards for your online behaviors.
10. What three words describe our philosophy of customer service? (Answer not found. The Financial Brand spent 15 minutes trying to find the answer to this question. Ironically, the bank’s three customer service values are not listed on their “Customer Service” page.)
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Each question is presented one at a time, and you do not have to answer each question correctly to proceed. According to the contest’s terms and conditions, it doesn’t appear that you have to answer any of the questions correctly to be entered into the random drawing (although it is limited to adults in Indiana and Illinois).
You do not have to answer a question correctly before you continue playing the game.
Most answers are easily found — no more than two clicks. By keeping the trivia questions simple,
Some financial marketers might be tempted to make their scavenger hunt tricky, because challenging games are usually more fun to play. But you have to be cautious: don’t overestimate users’ interest and patience in your game. More importantly, if you’re touting how sleek and simple your new website is, it probably shouldn’t take more than a minute for someone to find an answer. If you just redesigned your website, then hopefully all the information a consumer wants to know is only a few clicks away.
This isn’t the first time a financial institution has used an online scavenger hunt to engage its online audience. A few years ago, Belvoir FCU hosted a virtual scavenger hunt to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its website redesign. In its “Web Hunt 2010” promotion, Belvoir FCU sprinkled “slice of life” icons across its website. Participants had to find all 9 “slices” to be entered in the contest’s drawing. The contest ran for 45 days.
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Engineering the Strategic Complexion of Scavenger Hunt Questions
Peoples Bank is doing more than simply luring folks into exploring its website. They are exposing website visitors to a carefully crafted set of messages. They asked questions about:
- the bank’s heritage and values
- the bank’s range of services
- product features and benefits
- delivery channel options
The Trivial Pursuit style game provides an effective structure that gets consumers to willfully learn something about their bank. For Joe and Jane Average, the world of finance is rife with dull subjects. They prefer not to think about banking much at all, and banks in particular. But an online scavenger hunt successfully engages people’s brains, forcing them to think about this typically mundane subject — “Facts About My Bank” — in fun and unfamiliar ways.
5 Tips for Your Website Scavenger Hunt
1. You don’t have to wait until the next time you redesign your website to have an online scavenger hunt. You can hold one of these contests at any time.
2. Don’t just pick difficult or obscure questions for an online scavenger hunt. It should be fun, so don’t make it too complex, tricky or arduous.
3. Mix up the format of your questions so that they don’t get monotonous. You can use fill-in-the-blanks, multiple choice, true/false, etc.
4. Use multimedia. You can make your contest more robust by embedding clues/answers in photos, images and/or video, which will require visitors to do more than simply run Google searches for answers.
5. Think beyond your website. Also, you don’t have to limit your scavenger hunt exclusively to your website. You can create a scavenger hunt that encompasses a wider range of online channels — your Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, blog, Yelp!, online banking, online bill pay, mobile app, iPad app, etc. — whatever channels are central to your strategic priorities.